


You, Me, & Bruce make Three

by shadowkeeper



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Birds of Prey making an appearence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28105917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkeeper/pseuds/shadowkeeper
Summary: Sometimes, a family is made up of a mercenary dog walker, her tiny pickpocket assistant who makes questionable decisions about eating her heists, and an over sized guard-hyena.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 21
Kudos: 67
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	You, Me, & Bruce make Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clachnaben](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clachnaben/gifts).



There weren’t landlords in the good part of town, even the parts with big time mobsters and VPs for companies run by billionaire supervillains, that would rent an apartment out to someone as notorious as Harley Quinn, even if she was good for the rent and could pay for the whole lease up front. Even in Gotham, snooty neighborhood politics was the game in real estate.

Not that Harley went looking for apartments in the nice fancy parts of town. Who had the patience for quiet hours and neighbors with boring jobs, and gentrification? She’d just wanted a place of her own, a new home base, a neighborhood with character, and a landlord who wouldn’t sell her out and break her heart, you know?

Harley had found an apartment, paid for it, moved her current stash of meager possessions in and let Bruce sniff all the rooms, gone "shopping" for more furniture and supplies, put up a rather cool weapons rack, found some pretty fun colourful bowls for the kitchenette, and not put up pictures of Mistah J on the walls to pincushion with knives. She’s actually feeling really good about the place, seeing it fresh and clean, the quiet sounds of Bruce whuffing and chewing on a bone at her feet, the quiet clanking of spoon against bowl on the couch next to her. A whole complete fresh start.

The thought that’d been floating somewhere back of mind finally becomes coherent, and Harley swallows her mouthful of cereal and turns to stare at Cassie.

“Wait. Are you staying with me permanently?”

Cassie squints up at her, from about a foot away on the couch. 

“You helped me steal sheets and let me decorate my room”

The room. The second bedroom in this two bedroom apartment that has space for a longer couch than her old two-seater. The apartment that’s in the mid-time-mobsters-and-villain-lieutenant neighborhood of Gotham, where some criminals with decent income are raising kids away from the really noisy henchmen-and-two-bit-thieves neighborhood where Harley likes to sometimes party.

Harley’s too used to random chaotic things happening in her life and just going with the flow, that the reality check comes a bit late sometimes. 

“Did you just realize you don’t want me around anymore?”

For a small kid, Cassie seems pretty direct and straight forward when she’s not trying to lie about hiding diamonds, and it’s one of the things Harley can say she likes about her, though it’s not like she knows very much else.

“No, I just realize I never asked if you had parents to go back to.”

Cassie just shrugs to lift up her arm holding the cereal bowl, with the cast still around her wrist, and whether her parents are responsible, or Cassie’s using it as an excuse so she doesn’t have to go back, either seems like a good enough reason.

This is the first time, and probably will be the only time, that Harley is apparently going to be in charge of a minor. She’s not sure she has the first idea what kids do- her own memory of her actual childhood are a little hazy acid washed.

“So. You're in school, right? Kids go to school? What grade are you even in?”

That’s the question that gets Cassie to drop her cool and whine like a little kid.

“Do I have to? I can be like your sidekick. I don’t need school to do that.”

“Hey. I went to school for longer than you’ve been alive, how old are you anyway? And you’re not going to want to be my sidekick forever. If you find a fun science you like and decide to have a supervillain run at Gotham, that’s what school’s for.”

Cassie hms and turns back to face the TV, and Harley gets back to her cereal before it starts to get soggy, feeling good about encouraging education in today’s youths.

\- * - * -

Harley hadn’t know what to expect when she’d agreed to take Cassie on as a sidekick-slash-apprentice. She’d sort of just let it happen so she didn’t have to admit she likes having the kid around now.

Cassie’s eager to learn how to fight, but Harley’s not exactly sure where to start little kids in training. She’d learned as an adult, in a body fucked up a little by an acid bath, not as kid going through puberty and changing center of gravity. There’s a gymnastics club at Cassie’s school, and the kid’s taking Bruce out for runs to build her stamina, but it’s not like Harley has any insight into the training regimen for Batman’s-Training-School-for-Young-Robins. There’s probably martial arts classes in Gotham that has kid’s classes. It’s a work in progress. Cassie’s spending a lot of time swinging Harley’s baseball bat around the apartment and getting pretty good with it. 

Turns out though, even without being able to kick ass yet, Cassie is a pretty awesome trainee and assistant for an independent mercenary hit (wo)man. She has no embarrassment playing up the innocent, shy, lost schstick, and with her full cheeks and sad pout. She has a fake wrist cast to use sometimes after the real one came off, and when Harley unleashes her on the right audience, no one tends looks at Cassie’s left hand.

Sometimes Cassie goes in by herself into seedy restaurant-bars right before they switch to adults only, pretending to look for her dad but really keeping her ears open for information, pick pocketing, or for that really weird case, planting fake evidence. Cassie’s still nervous about it, and had come right out and said she’s still not 100% sure Harley’s at her back, in earshot with her biggest guns cocked and ready as promised. But the one time Cassie screamed, when someone she actually accidentally bumped into got angry and aggressive, Harley had shown up two seconds later with her biggest mallet and delivered a lecture about being nice to kids while delivering a beat down. 

Harley knows she’s like a loud, bright, flashing neon sign of chaos whenever she goes, and she’s not gonna hide her light under a bushel. But, she will admit, the quiet, fade-into-the-background- subtle approach can get the job done quicker and sometimes, faster means more money. So. Cassie’s actually adding a lot to this team and earning her keep. Harley lets Cassie play around with her confetti shotguns down by the docks as a treat when she realizes this. They have to make a run for it when some goon squad shows up with real-bullet guns to complain about the noise. Cassie gets a shot in to trip someone as they’re running away, and Harley has to stop and cackle as the man goes down in a spray of confetti and glitter. It almost gets them caught, but Bruce jumps out of the dark. snarling, protective but also looking for a snack. They’re both laughing all the way home, and Bruce gets smothered in pets and kisses, as he keeps the leg bone he’d acquired.

And then there’s the time that Harley’s going ham on a bunch of low level minions in a warehouse, 11pm one night, while Cassie’s rifling though one of the back offices, when their job for a quick retrieval intersects with the dorky girlgroup calling themselves the Birds of Prey when Harley literally almost wipes out Renee with leg sweep when the woman comes out of the dark warehouse shadows without warning.

“Sandwich murderer!”

She rests her mallet on her shoulder and she straightens, and the rest of Gotham’s latest band of do-gooders come out of the shadows.

“Oh hey gals! Whatcha doing here?”

The couple times Harley’s run into the girls since the whole Roman thing, it had been without Cassie around. Helena got her family money back, and seems pretty cool with Harley now. Renee is probably never going to warm up to her, even if she isn’t a cop anymore. Dinah vacillates between friendly and wary, but Harley’s got a soft spot for her.

“These guys are shipping weapons out of this warehouse. What the hell are you doing here?”  
Renee, straight to business, and never not glaring at Harley.

“We’re ransacking the office for some non-weapon-y things, so really, we can get outta your hair and not get involved in any arms deals. My probation officer will not be happy about that.”

“Who’s we? You’re not back with the Joker, are you?”

“Oh hey guys! Oh woah, that’s such a cool crossbow!”  
Cassie sounds excited as she bounds out of the back office with Bruce on a leash, and Helena grins happily at the complement, but Dinah and Renee look horrified. 

“What’s she doing here?”

\- * - * -

They get milkshakes when the yelling stops.  
Well, Cassie and Helena get milkshakes because Cassie isn’t allowed to drink yet and Helena likes the taste of milkshakes better than the taste of really cheap tequila. The rest of them get something stronger, but Harley wants to note that the bar served milkshakes. The bartender also took one look at Harley and the Birds and didn’t way a word about the minor trailing in after them. Bruce had to stay outside though.

They crowd into a corner so Dinah and Renee can interrogate Harley, who doesn’t appreciate the grilling, but is willing to go along because she does not need this meddling threesome showing up at her apartment and starting shit.

Dinah seems the most incensed. Cassie had mentioned living in the same building at her for awhile.  
“I cannot believe you’re bringing her out there. It’s bad enough she’d staying with you, she should be in school.”

“But she doesn’t have school tomorrow. She doesn’t even have homework.”  
Harley doesn’t have to know what day of the week if she doesn’t want to, but she’s pretty sure it’s the weekend now…. Saturday? There’s more people out on the streets than most other days, and there’s no school on the weekends, right?

Cassie seemed pretty enthralled in Helena’s explanation on the various parts of her new shiny purple crosssbow, but she must have caught some part of that.

“It’s a three day weekend! I don’t have to go back till Tuesday cuz it's a holiday Monday.” 

This gives all four women pause, because none of them know what month it even is anymore, let alone when the holidays are. Renee recovers the fastest, and shakes her head.  
“I quit my job like a few months ago. How am I so out of it already?”

“Wait. What are 3 day weekends?”  
Helena still doesn’t get it, and Cassie excitedly trying to explain the concept of ‘bank holidays’ without really understanding what exactly banks do and why they get holidays probably isn’t helping. 

At least it’s given Dinah a second to regroup.  
“She’s going to school?”

“Yeah. She’s got school and after school clubs and homework and everything. And like, her grades aren't like, future med school top of the class great, but who cares? And turns out I didn’t completely lose my mind cuz sometimes she has questions about math and like I totally remember how to solve equations.”  
Realizing that she still retained algebra had been a moment. Lost her mind but kept the math. 

Renee and Dinah were looking at her oddly as she slurped up her margarita.

“Did she bust up her knee running around with you in warehouses?”  
Renee’s interrogation voice grated on the back of Harley’s nerves like gravel and she scowled.

“She fell in her after school gymnastics club. I’m not going to have her fight when she doesn’t know what she’s doing. That’s a waste of a really good assistant.”

Cassie beams at Harley, popping the milkshake straw out of her mouth.

“This bitch tripped me off the balance beam and I landed wrong, but I totally got her back when I kicked her in the head practicing cartwheels.”  
She pauses to high five Harley, and Helena holds up her palm too for a slap afterwards, approving of the revenge.

And I get to start this cool kickboxing class next week so I’m totally going to learn how to kick dudes in the face.”

Helena nods along - “I did some kickboxing when I was training with assassins in Sicily” -and Harley considers asking her for tips on training teen girls how to kill: Huntress would totally be a cooler role model for Cassie than that teen girl Batgirl from a few years ago. Even if she’s still awkward as hell.  
And at least Cassie seems to like her.

“Oh coooooool!!! You were trained by assassins???”  
Right. Cassie hadn’t been around for all the narration about Huntress’s backstory. She didn’t know about Huntress’s dark and tragic past and subsequent rampage through Gotham’s organized crime scene. 

“Hey. Hey”  
Renee grabs Harley’s attention as Cassie’s peppering Helena with questions, and Dinah’s staring at her too, like they’re tag teaming the interrogation now.

“She better not be just running around pickpocking random people. Gotham PD is going to come down harder on her if they know she runs with you.” 

“What, like Gotham PD’s ever arrested anyone I’ve run with. Well, arrested anyone who doesn't want to be arrested. You need like, Argus to do it for real. And she’s got better things to do than grabbing wallets and running away from the police. She’s my assistant and we’ve got mercenary gigs and independent consulting work to do.”

Harley and the former detective are locked in a stare-off as Dinah sighs and downs her drink next to them, and Harley refuses to break first as she calls over to Cassie.

“We're going home now, Bruce needs real dinner. You can get assassin-ing tips later.”  
And to Harley’s credit, Cassie cheerfully waves goodbye and bounds out of the bar after Harley, like her knee isn’t hurting at all, and takes Bruce’s leash as they take off to find Harley’s car. Cassie’s scored Helena’s number, excitedly chatting out loud about how cool it would be to have assassin parents and...  
“But like, can I train with her sometimes, pleaseeee?????”

Harley has no idea when she’s become the actual boss of this teenager, but she’s finding she’s not hating the feeling. 

\- * - * -

“But why can’t I go with you?”  
Cassie was barely not whining while Harley packed, or it was a whine and they’re both pretending not to notice.

“Cuz I’m gonna meet up with some old prison buddies to break into a secret fortress filled with jacked up soldiers with guns, and you have nothing to contribute?”

Gun, gun, handful of knives, big gun, _oh_ , grenades.  
That last one goes on gently on top, and Harley pats them before zipping up her duffle and straightening up on the couch.  
She turns to see Cassie’s fake pout and rolls her eyes. The girl knows how to use her round cheeks to deadly effect, but it doesn’t work on a hardened criminal like Harley. 

“Even if you were fully trained up, like, that newest little angry Robin good, I still wouldn’t bring you. What are you going to do when someone four times your size is kill first, ask questions later?”

“Hey. It’s not like you have superpowers. Why are you going then?”

Harley grimaces, because it wasn’t her idea of a good time.  
“Amanda Waller’s got a whole lotta dirt and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”  
Harley can tell Cassie doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t really have to. Harley just needs her stay in Gotham and not get it in her sneaky head to find a way to follow along and get cause up in Argus bullshit.

“Look. Helena said you can stay with her and the girls. You like Helena. She can teach you assassin-y things and maybe let you play with her crossbow. You can take Bruce for his walks, and Dinah’s gonna be around, and you said you had that big English test you need to study for. And those goody-two-shoes are way less cool than me and probably won’t let you have ice cream for breakfast, so you can come back here for that.”

Cassie’s supposed to be sorta couch surfing between the Birds for the week Harley’s off to do Amanda Waller’s dark bidding, and dropping by their apartment after school to take Bruce out for his walks because no one else has the room for him. Or wants him in their apartment. It’s a slapped together plan, but it’s not like Harley had a heads up for the job offer-slash-threat coming out of some random dark alley way near the apartment, flanked by Argus soldiers. 

“If you don’t come back. I’m going to steal all your money and run away to Star City.”  
Cassie’s fake pout hasn’t gone away, but she isn’t arguing. It’s a coin toss if that means she’s going to be trouble, or if she’s going to play nice.

“Hey. If you know where I keep keep all the money, and you didn’t take it already, does this mean you like me now?”

“Nooooo. You said if I messed with you, you’d kill me cuz you didn’t care if I was a kid or not.”

“Awwwww. If you steal from me now, maybe I’ll just, like, bust your knee cap or something. You’ve sorta grown on me you know? Like a fungus.”

Cassie sniffs, for real now, and what is Harley supposed to even do here?  
Bruce saves her the awkwardness by slinking over and plopping down on the floor next to Cassie, dropping his head in her lap with a whuff. Really, Bruce is such a teddy bear. 

Harley reaches over to give Bruce a few solid pets next to Cassie’s hands in his fur, and then pets Cassie a few times for good measure.

“If something happens to me, and I’m way late or I get permanently blown up, I’ll have someone come tell you so you don’t have to like, not know for forever.”

Cassie nods without looking up, and Harley doesn’t know she even got into this situation- she just let a cool kid stay in her spare room. She didn’t know it was going to come with feelings.  
“Where’s all this separation anxiety coming from? You’re the one who ran away from home! I’m having trouble reading where you are on the attachment model chart here, you’re giving me mixed signals.”

Harley can’t see Cassie’s face, can’t see if she’s making the ‘Harley’s taking psychiatry gibberish again’ expression, and she wasn’t a child therapist, she had no idea what she was working with here.

“You don’t, like, have to come back if you don’t want to, but I’ll like really miss you.”

Oh.  
So they were hugging now, Harley wrapped around Cassie who still hadn’t let go of Bruce.

“Where else would I go? Gotham’s home. No other city’s got a Batman to play with. And you’re just starting your training. I gotta see what it’s like when we unleash you on the city. It’s gonna be so much fun and I gotta be here for it.”

Cassie’s head nods under Harley’s chin, and this is just too much feelings and sentimentality for Harley right now, all without notice.  
“I’ll let you take a few of those smoke bombs with the fun colours. You gotta take a picture of Canary’s face if you set one off in her apartment.”

Cassie giggles, and it sets Bruce off copycat chuckles, and this is nice. It’s been awhile since Harley’s had nice.


End file.
